Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death Using Biometric Data
December 18th, 2007Years ago, when the news broke that U.S. Forces were collecting biometric data from Iraqis, I was so shocked by the program that I made an effort to archive audio from an NBC news piece about it.
Now we know that the data is being used, in part, to draw up execution lists.
Remember that the Department of Defense is in the process of acquiring technology than can scan the irises of entire crowds of people at once.
Is a rifle scope with a built in iris/retina scanner in the works? Green light: Live. Red light: Die.
Or…
Oh wait a minute…
Just let the terminator robots roll around in autonomous mode, looking people in the eyes.
Via: Global Research:
U.S. forces in Iraq soon will be equipped with high-tech equipment that will let them process an Iraqi’s biometric data in minutes and help American soldiers decide whether they should execute the person or not, according to its inventor.
“A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?†Pentagon weapons designer Anh Duong told the Washington Post for a feature on how this 47-year-old former Vietnamese refugee and mother of four rose to become a top U.S. bomb-maker.
Though Duong is best known for designing high-explosives used to destroy hardened targets, she also supervised the Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities project, known as a “lab in a box†for analyzing biometric data, such as iris scans and fingerprints, that have been collected on more than one million Iraqis.
The labs – collapsible, 20-by-20-foot units each with a generator and a satellite link to a biometric data base in West Virginia – will let U.S. forces cross-check data in the field against information collected previously that can be used to identify insurgents. These labs are expected to be deployed across Iraq in early 2008.
Duong said the next step will be to shrink the lab to the size of a “backpack†so soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes†if he’s on a terrorist watch list and should be killed.
Duong justified this biometric-data program as a humanitarian way of singling out “bad guys†for elimination while sparing innocent civilians.
“I don’t want My Lai in Iraq,” Duong said. “The biggest difficulty in the global war on terror – just like in Vietnam – is to know who the bad guys are. How do we make sure we don’t kill innocents?”
In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military units already are operating under loose rules of engagement that allow them to kill individuals who are identified as suspected terrorists or who show the slightest evidence of being insurgents. American forces also have rounded up tens of thousands of Iraqi military-age males, or MAMs, for detention.
During a summer 2007 trip to Iraq, Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was briefed on U.S. plans to expand the number of Iraqis in American detention by the end of 2008.
“The detainees have risen to over 18,000 and are projected to hit 30,000 (by the U.S. command) by the end of the year and 50,000 by the end of 2008,†Cordesman wrote in his trip report.
The sweeps have enabled the U.S. military to collect biometric data for future use if and when the Iraqis are released back into the general population.
“The biggest difficulty in the global war on terror – just like in Vietnam – is to know who the bad guys are. How do we make sure we don’t kill innocents?â€
Why, that’s easy, hon — keep on criminalizing such things as thoughts, participation in anti-war protests, and asking too many questions (“Don’t taze, me bro!”), and our masters can mow us down with impunity while claiming a clear conscience.
For what it’s worth, I have a cousin by marriage whose family is/was native to the Baghdad area, and here’s the real killer: his first name is Usama. Recently relocated to a rural ranch in the eastern portion of my state of origin (WA), he’s getting a start on what I’ve been working away at for awhile now, much like our host.
So, when I talk about Iraq, as when I talk about my adopted Lotharingian Germany, you can understand how my sympathies tend to be with the locals getting hammered by the “protectors” and “democratizers”.
As I read along with the increasing number of stories announcing the roll-out of the stuff of several decades of science fiction nightmares, it all eventually distills down to the realization that Iraq — like Afghanistan and Panama and anywhere else boots are on the ground or carriers are in the neighborhood — is a giant weapons testing facility with millions of expendable live targets for field testing.
Viewed alongisde what we know of the origins of the MIC that Ike referred to on his way out, and their “hiring” of most of the Nazi scientific complex after the war via Operation Papeclip, one begins to sense the actual vague outlines of the beast itself moving nearby, shrouded by the fog of perpetual war. The Nazi wisdom gleaned from the grand chattel experiments conducted over here are still churning away, buried deep in the bowels of companies like Lockheed-Martin and their vast web of contractors.
Every so often, news of their great accomplishments bubbles triumphantly to the surface, as if they were doing man & womankind a service by marching in lockstep toward a world we thought hallucinatory when we heard visions of it channeled through guys like Philip K. Dick.
These days, my strategy can be reduced to what I call a modified Joyce-ian approach: The constant application of silence, exile and cunning, always with an eye toward that ever-popular adage among the ailing real estate set, “location, location, location”.
What’s truly funny is that I’m saying this “out loud” on the web, effectively broadcasting the same drop-out & care for your local zone philosophy as Kevin. So much for silence and exile, and perhaps cunning. Just call me Cassandra’s cousin.
I do so to say just a few more times to those who would still listen: seek cover folks, it’s only a matter of time before some exits begin to close. Basic, repetitive historical signs are appearing, like controls and limitations on the flow of liquid capital. Do the math.